I needed to escape the Love Canal house for my own health so I started to plan a trip to Maine. Two days later than planned my stomach pains finally let up enough for me to make a midnight trek and I landed softly and quietly in the wee morning hours after spending four hours cranking up the classic rock and caterwauling at the top of my lungs. I don’t know why people seem to despise driving long distances alone so much. I find it… liberating.
I really wanted to make the most of this week. I have a bunch of stops all planned out but today? Up, still got that alcohol-free hangover, and once again didn’t make it out by noon. No matter. I was on my way! I had decided after reading a series of glowing reviews to check out Rangeley Lake State Park, a two hour drive, in the hopes of catching some great foliage snaps. I planned on making September my Leaf Peeping month but the weather has been absolute whack this year and the trees are terribly confused. “Do I turn color now or…? Well I see a third of your leaves are colored buuut….” Lakes are great for foliage photos because if it’s a calm day you can get all those gorgeous colors reflected on the water.
There wasn’t much for foliage when I started out but heading into the mountains I was soon awash with bright reds, oranges, and a few yellows. Perfect. There was however quite a bit of road work, numerous flashing moose signs, and by the time I got to park I don’t think I had seen another car in twenty minutes. That always makes me a smidge hesitant. Lately I have had a lot of concerned citizens tell me I should be loaded up on mace, heavily armed, and walking a large dog wherever I go. Bears! Moose! Serial killers! Oh my! But I probably should take heed. Central Maine is the Bermuda Triangle of weird disappearances and murder mysteries. I always felt this was because, as comedian Bob Marley put it, “There’s four cops in Maine and they’re all busy following the one black guy that lives there.” Dark humor cuts deep. Also it’s rutting season which means there are horny roving bucks who can be quite dangerous… SIGH.
The drive to the park was drop dead gorgeous. Just imagine being surrounded on all sides by coral colored trees fluttering in the breeze as your car zooms at light speed through them. (The speed of light is the general consensus of locals on how fast cars should go on their roads… Speed limit signs aren’t even symbolic anymore. They’re more like a snarky backhanded “joke” about your inadequacies.) The park was however… rather dull!
It was pretty abandoned. There was an entrance booth asking me for $6 but no one to take it. Instead an honor box optimistically read, “Put money here.” There wasn’t a soul in sight. I drove in and it’s basically one road that ends in a loop and has a couple other tiny roads jutting off that lead to a beach and a boat launching port. The entirety of the loop was set up for camping – spaces for RV’s, tents, and at this time of year – creepy wide open spaces labelled by number.
This place would be AWSOME if it happened to be in the dead of summer and I had a carload of children I wanted to dump in the woods somewhere so I could force them to socialize with other Lord of the Flies styled foundlings. This had everything for that – camp sites, picnic tables galore, well beaten paths with no parking directly adjoining the camping spots, a beach, two outhouses, even a drinking fountain! Granted by now it was filled with leaves and the beach and camp sites were so empty that all you could hear was an apocalyptic wind blow by. But I was here and going to make the best of it.
I parked my car at the boat launching dock, as one does in a Prius to confuse people, and hopped out of the car with my camera. A middle aged guy on a motorcycle drove up, claimed one of the docking ports, and spent an awfully lot of time avoiding eye contact with me as I strode by. HI. I’m Typhani. I have bright orange hair, a purple plaid shirt, and sometimes I bite. Usually only on Fridays though so don’t worry. So went the imaginary conversation in my head.
I took a few photos of the mountains beyond the boat docks before heading into the woods where I found a trail leading to the beach. Goodie! This was a well worn path. So many tiny traipsing feet had gone by here that the path was more of a gaping maw in the ground where tree roots clung to a tenuous existence above ground.
I must admit the beach was pretty cool as far as beaches go. It had picnic tables, grassy spots, BBQ pits, stairs leading to the water, a rocky and shallow slate lined lake bottom, and a very nice view. I took a few snaps and splashed a little bit before heading back. This time I went against the signs and took some path that led me by all these cozy little camp slots for VIP introverts. I found a little cragged cliff near the shoreline and decided to scramble down it and play for a bit. This was more fun than the beach! I took delightful whimsy photos of my soaking wet shoes (whoops, one missed step…) and marbles. I made this place look fantastic. Oh the joy of having an artistic eye. My walk back to the car was fairly uneventful except I managed to annoy a gaggle of Canadian geese and some song birds. I think all suffered PTSD from having so many kids harassing them during the summer. Never have I seen a titmouse dive bomb into the woods with a massive crash whenever they see a person. “OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THEY’RE BACK!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!” The geese were almost as dramatic as they stampeded through the parking lot trying to get to the water and away from me. And by this time another lookee-loo was driving around, this time watching me. I get watched a lot. Is it the hair? It must be the hair. Anyway that was my visit to Rangeley Lake State Park. Was it worth the two hour drive there? Well, for an anti-social single woman like myself probably not but I know where I will be sending people who have kids!
If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!
It’s the first day of October which means my favorite holiday of the year is coming up – Halloween. In celebration of this I have decided to make this month’s travels themed. So welcome to the first entry of my Haunted New England Tour! I will try my best to go to locations that are haunted, creepy, abandoned, surrounded by local myths and legends, stalked by cryptozoological beasts, or part of our brutal history. Of course there will be a number of cemeteries and this month could be a great way to get all you history and psychology buffs involved as New England is the site of many murders and mysteries! I shouldn’t have any problem finding new places to go!
I am starting out with a familiar stomping ground for me – the graveyard behind the town common in Ashby. If you’re wondering what the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery is I am told cemeteries exist on their own while graveyards are consecrated ground adjoining a church. It took me way too long to figure out what this particular graveyard was called. I had to stare at Google street view for quite a while! But the Church is the First Parish Church (Unitarian Universalists) and the graveyard behind it is called 
But anyway this cemetery is mostly slate stones which are the older stones you can find here, mostly dating to the 1700’s. These stones were particularly beautiful as they clearly had several different artists, all adding their own unique signature styles to familiar symbology. This was the first time I found a triple-headed stone. There’s usually one or two double-headed stones here and there, most often married couples or more grimly the gravesites of slaves, infants, or peasants (as double stones are cheaper than two separate stones…) From what I could guess these appeared to be siblings, all children, all dying in the third year of their life. Another sad find was a double stone for a twenty three year old woman in the late 1700’s who died four days after giving birth and one day after her infant died. Was this due to complications, disease, or a broken heart? We may never know but there did seem an inordinate amount of children here, even considering the time period.
Because of its age this graveyard is littered with Revolutionary War soldiers. I have become accustomed to seeing their stones, usually easy to spot because of their metal war plaques and the small American flags that are placed at each. During my first visit here I noticed a very lonely little stone at the very back left corner. It was just a square marble post, looking more like a property marker than a gravestone. It was showered in pennies. In New England this is an old tradition that denotes respect for an important historical figure. Who could it be? I wandered closer and read the stone, “PRINCE ESTABROOK NEGRO GREATON’S CO. 3 MASS REGT REV. WAR.” I must admit this confused me greatly. Was Negro his last name or was he black? And if he was black… we had black revolutionary war soldiers?! I didn’t have a penny to leave that first time I visited but I did today and it seemed to mean a little more because I knew who it was now after looking his story up.
Prince Estabrook was indeed a black man and also a slave. On April 19, 1775, after requesting and being granted legal permission from his owner, he became the first black man to become a revolutionary war soldier (yes, I said first, not only.) He fought and was wounded in the battle of Lexington and Concord, the first battle of the Revolutionary War. His service was on and off from there until the end of the war. We know shockingly little other than that. We have no idea why he volunteered to fight for a country which was enslaving him, we have pretty much no details of his personal life, only that after he eventually won his freedom he lived in Ashby Massachusetts with the son of his previous owner, dying at around ninety years of age. He does not appear to have been honored in any special way during his life and on his death he was buried outside the graveyard’s official boundaries, forever segregated. This explains why his stone was so… isolated. It was moved at some point in recent history to at least be within the graveyard’s official grounds. Only in 2008 did he get recognition being mentioned on a memorial facing the Lexington Green where he fought.
Today’s my birthday. It’s also the first day in weeks I have been well enough to leave the house for an excursion longer than grocery shopping. Being cooped up, and feeling myself age like a fine wine, I was desperate for some fresh air. Sadly it was raining… apparently everywhere. I wanted to go to the White Mountains, raining, hike up one of the local mountains, raining, go to Vermont for some foliage photos, raining. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer though, I NEEDED TO GET OUT. 
That’s how I ended up in Mason NH. I had this gut feeling that I’d just know when to turn off. And wow. Despite spending some of my childhood in Mason I know remarkably little about it. There are winding dirt roads everywhere with just stunning views of forest and trees, hills, pastures, farms, huge farm houses, tiny cabins, just such a wonderful diversity! Yep… this was working. This was feeding something in my soul that was starving. It fit in nicely with the music I have taken up listening to once again – a poignant and heady mix of 60’s folk and classic rock. I’m thirty-two years old today and I feel like I can almost see time passing me by. I don’t have a career, a home of my own, a relationship, or children, I blow effortlessly in the breeze like a leaf gliding to the earth. Perhaps that is why I had the ethereal tune of Can’t Find my Way Home whispering through my mind all day. “Well, I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
I had looped around a great deal of dirt roads and kept coming back to the 143 so I drove that for a little while until I spotted a big green sign aside the road denoting a historical landmark. As it turns out I had driven to Uncle Sam’s childhood home. I didn’t even know he had any connections to New England. I parked aside the road, took a photo of the sign and the house which was obviously owned by someone who I was hoping wasn’t home and watching, and then meandered only about 50 or 100 feet down the road where I noticed a trail head. Yup, this is where I was supposed to be. I could feel it.
It was cold. And wet. And cloudy. My camera wasn’t happy with any of these conditions but I told it to buck up, we’re doing this thing. It actually turned out to be a sweet little trail! The rain made it all the more magical to me, the damp seemed to add a sense of whimsy. Moss covered rocks lined the path to either side, a few stone walls were scattered throughout likely marking property boundaries from a few hundred years ago, and since it was such a wet day there were salamanders everywhere. They were the bright orange kind you see so frequently here if you’re the kind of person who looks under damp logs which I am.
The salamanders weren’t the only critters out today. I also go to see a number of chipmunks. For being so common they sure are hard to photograph! I feel the aggravation of wildlife photographers as I set my eyes on these tiny fuzzy beasts. They chipped and alerted me to a spot a little off the path which had clearly been used as some dumping ground for spare metal and glass at some point. Pieces of cars and machinery I couldn’t identify scattered the ground next to a rusted out metal wash basin filled with broken glass bottles from God knows when. I inched up to it slowly, hoping it wasn’t an active campsite of someone who was just deranged. Luckily it wasn’t and I took a moment to look at the rust and decay. I smiled knowing nature was taking care of this mess.
Towards the end of the trail was I super happy to find a huge cluster of mushrooms which I think were Hens of the Woods, edible. I am not that ballsy to try my hypothesis but I did enjoy finding them! They smelled delicious – which probably means I’ve misidentified them and can kill a small village with them. That tends to be how these things go… In any event I took a photo of this find next to my shoes to compare them for size.
Today was everything I wanted last Friday to be – absolutely amazing. And all I had to do was wander off while trying to go to the feed store for bunny food. I hardly ever just go out to do errands anymore. Somehow I always manage to find myself falling down the proverbial rabbit hole again.
This place was swank as far as trails go! It had a memorial rock right at the entrance as well as a mailbox full of maps and a guestbook. Whoever left this place must have been loaded – as most of Sharon is. And wow! It was breath taking!
I had thought I was alone you see… I mean who else would be here, there were no cars… and that’s when, bitching vocally to the camera, “Focus damn you!” three people came striding by to see my sorry butt in the air, my slacks sagging (from loss of weight and lack of belt) and my drawers hanging out, standing on all fours on the ground trying to get just the right shot of an adorable mushroom I found. Who knows what they think I was doing, either way everyone avoided eye contact. And not long after that a woman came by with her young son. It was all rather sweet.
The trail went on quite a ways and ended at a little bridge where it connected to another trail that went… .who the hell knows! Another trail off the main one was labeled, “woodland trail” and that one was a loop trail. I didn’t get to explore it but this preserve had a sign saying it was still open in winter for hiking. I suddenly need snowshoes. I thought I’d be cooped up for these cold dark months but maybe not. All the women in my life keep yelling at me – for getting lost, for having too much “bravery” to go charging into strange woods alone, for just generally being adventurous, but you know what? If I get eaten by bears then so be it. At least I died doing something I loved. And besides I have yet to see any bears but now that I said that there will probably be a plague of them on my next little jaunt.
Anyway, this place was soooo pretty and relaxing I would suggest it to anyone. Truly delightful. I am calm once again! Even more so my mind is sparked and enthusiastic. I dream of someday owning a property much like this, hopefully with a river running through it, so I may also create a hiking trail for the public, winding through the woods, past fairy houses placed by local artists, and past my little educational farm and back again. I can see it so clearly and I know in my heart working towards this goal is what I am supposed to be doing with my life – giving back, being joyful, becoming the wild child I always knew I was. Anyway, if that is something you would like to know more about feel free to check out my future farm’s page where I work towards this goal, philosophize, and sell my art: 
Most days when I set out on an adventure I end up in Narnia, somewhere hidden and unexpected, somewhere full of whimsy and joy. I was expecting nothing short of this on Friday when I found myself once again crawling out of my own skin to get out. It’d been a week of bad insomnia and health issues so I didn’t get out until way later than I should have but I still had great hopes when I set off. I was going to go to Vermont, for what reason I wasn’t sure, and coming home from Vermont I was going to stop at a fabric store or two so I could purchase some cloth with which to start designing my own clothes. Little was I to know that day’s adventure would be more of a misadventure.
Somehow I came across Gifford Woods State Park as a destination. Another blogger had been around Kent Pond and took some lovely snaps when there was still snow on the ground. I figured this was a good starting place so ignoring the faintest pain behind my eye, a sure sign of a migraine to come, I hopped in the car, programmed the GPS, and set out on the two hour drive.
As usual the drive was gorgeous. I ended up winding down all sorts of country roads, through the mountains which where all starting to become flush with red, orange, and yellow. It made my heart beat just a little faster. I passed many places I wanted to check out but I knew I had to get to the trails soon because it gets dark in the woods several hours before it gets dark everywhere else and I was already trying to beat the clock.
I started entering the Killington area to find this was a community that seemed to be based on skiing. The mountains were striped with deforestation, the result of creating many ski paths down them, and the little businesses all seemed swanky and cute. I even passed a place called Cyco Bikes. Vermont has always been super fond of punderful business names.
I think the answer was no but I was soon inundated with about eighty different things at once. This super friendly woman handed me not one but two maps and proceeded to point out about fifty different trails and why each was great as well as directions to them because none of the ones she was pointing out attached to the parking lot (I think that was the one trail she didn’t mention!) Some had old hardwood trees which I am sure are nice but if I remember right most of the trees that turn color are soft wood. Some had waterfalls. Some were a three hour hike and attached to other trails, some were fifteen minutes. Eventually she got to the pond. I asked politely about that one. Again she gave me two different answers. I could go out of the parking lot, take a left, and take it from there for a two to three hour trail or I could go some other farther away destination down several roads and have a fifteen minute hike and some waterfalls. I did the first as her second set of directions completely baffled me.
I found a spot near where I parked the car that looked like it could be a trail, be it a horribly overgrown one. So I entered and found myself about five inches deep in mud. Whatever this was had all sorts of shoe prints going in two directions at a tiny fork. I went towards the lake and slogged through the muck about twenty feet before the foot prints dried up and I was hit with even deeper mud and a wall of forest. I tried the other side and came across the same issue. I left. Maybe it was on the other side of this little beach? There did seem to be some sort of path through the reeds behind the bulletin board… I was able to walk maybe thirty feet on that “path” where I could see a beaver lodge but unless I wanted to swim the rest of the way around the lake there was no way around that. Clearly based on the footprints I wasn’t the only one having this problem.
Annoyed I left. I figured I could find a trail, any trail, and find something good on it, so back to the car I went. The problem is I am still driving the borrowed Prius and this was not the area to be driving a Prius. It was a fifty mile an hour road where all the locals were going seventy and they were pissed if you wanted to stop at one of these trail heads or slow down in any way. I didn’t even have a chance because upon leaving the parking lot I was greeted with a steep hill and the Prius refused to pick up speed. I got to fourty, maybe forty five, and a pick up behind me was up my tail pipe from out of nowhere. He was driving so fast and aggressively I thought I’d be nice, pull over, and let him pass. That didn’t make him happy either as he blared his horn as he whooshed by. I don’t know what he expected me to do… I can only press the gas pedal so far. If the car refuses to go the car refuses to go and we are on a fucking mountain after all. This happened a couple times until I finally found another trailhead, the Sherbourne Trail. This time there was a huge sign aside the road and a very obvious parking lot. Granted I could not find this particular path on the map.
I got out. There were numerous people, all accompanied by mountain bikes. One look at the path and I knew that’s what it was for, not for hikers, even though it wasn’t marked as such with any signage. Fuck it. It was a little over a mile long, claiming to be a “mountain pass.” I thought why not, mountain passes have summits, and that would be perfect for some foliage photos. Up I went zigzagging and stepping aside whenever I heard a bike coming up behind me. The cyclists were all super sweet and some were even laughing, all of them thanked me for stepping aside.
There wasn’t much to see here… a number of mossy rocks but not much else. A few times I came across a smell that was wonderful and sweet and brought me right back to my childhood but I couldn’t tell you what it was. Since the trail zigzagged and branched a few times I was trying to keep focused on the orange trail markers…. but I think whoever was putting them up was colorblind because they’d inadvertently turn pink from time to time for no reason. Usually when this happens it means two trails are converging. I saw no evidence of this.
I ended up where there was some sort of construction. Two twenty something year old men were putting down a bridge. I hadn’t passed that before… did I? How the hell did I get here? And more importantly did I have the courage to fess up and admit I was lost? Not at first. I passed them, knowing immediately that was the wrong decision when my poor little converses sank in the mud. I hadn’t passed mud…. this was the wrong way… but I still had my pride. I walked a little ways but this time the sound of cars was so distant I could barely hear them at all. My back up plan was to find a road and hitchhike back to the car if, God forbid, I ended up truly and utterly lost. I headed back, sheepishly, and asked where the fuck I was. I had a nice little chat with these two very friendly guys, and one of them said, “Go out to the intersection and take a left. Keep taking lefts. You’ll end up back at the parking lot.” Thank God I knew which trail head I had come or they wouldn’t have known where to send me either. They sheepishly admitted this trail was brand new and as of yet poorly marked. I didn’t even see the intersection coming up… but I saw it going back and kept going, and going, and going, until as promised, about a mile and a half away, sat the Prius, also looking sheepish, it somehow found itself cuddled up to another Prius (with a bike rack??) and a horse trailer. The horse trailer made me laugh. Clearly someone else didn’t know this was a bike path so I’m not that numb after all.
By now I was overheated, dehydrated, exhausted, and my migraine was starting to kick in full force. That’s never a good thing when you’ve got nausea and have to navigate down curving mountain roads and psychotic 180 degree loop-de-loop styled New England exits. By now it was five in the evening. I’d been on that trail for more than two hours. There’d be no extra foliage shots on the way home for me and I wouldn’t be stopping at any fabric stores either with my head pounding like this. About fifty minutes from home I started getting super sick and started to look for places to pull off the road and take a nap but by then all the picnic areas and rest stops seemed to have disappeared. As I entered Keene, thirty five minutes from home, I debated stopping in the city somewhere but by then it was only thirty five minutes. I could handle it, couldn’t I? Driving by was a decision I soon regretted as I stared at the clock every five minutes, watching it tick down, desperately wanting to be home. By the time I pulled in the driveway it took all my strength not to open the car door and just barf all over the ground. I was crazy dizzy as I tottled back to the house and collapsed immediately into bed. Better luck next time? I sure hope so!
Today I needed to drive – desperately. So I made an excuse to go out and somehow ended up three hours away in Montepelier Vermont just as the sun was starting to go down. My aim was to find a castle in the woods. Instead I found a sweet little dog park, a lot of aging hippies, and a gorgeous cemetery. Green Mount Cemetery is actually famous. The stones there are clearly for rich people and are exquisite. Nestled between the green mountains the view from the cemetery is breathtaking. It’s a popular fall destination spot because it’s even more beautiful when the trees turn color. I was a couple weeks early for that but this didn’t stop me from ambling in and checking the place out. The sign at the gate said it closes at dusk but in true Vermont fashion the only thing making sure this happened was those tiny forgettable little signs. This place didn’t even have a gate anymore, just five separate open entrances. Suffice to say I took my time.
I may not have found the castle I was looking for but I did find a castle-like structure at the entrance of the cemetery! That was close enough and besides the drive up there was all I needed to settle my frazzled mind. I find I am needing more and more intellectual stimulation these days and it’s driven me in some odd directions. Driving for three hours into the mountains seemed to ease this need. Just between you and me I caterwauled a great deal of the way until I nearly lost my voice. That’s what the open road is all about – freedom. Freedom of movement, freedom of intellectual curiosity, freedom to butcher your favorite classic rock songs as loudly as you can muster.
It’s been a hellish week for so many here in the US. I have spent much of it watching in horror as people I know, and many thousands I do not, are evacuated from their homes in Texas and Florida and sent north to flee a succession of powerful hurricanes which are pounding everything they touch. I’ve seen people turned down by the airlines because they have brought their pets without a shipping proof carrier with themto escape, I have seen others having to leave beloved animals like horses behind because there was just no transport, no where to bring them, and no time. Hotels for hundreds of miles out are all booked solid leaving those traveling by car at the mercy of their vehicles should they need sleep or a break. The scene is of utter chaos and my heart continues to go out to anyone working their way through it.
It rained all week here and I found myself alone for the duration of this. Normally I enjoy a little time to indulge my inner introvert but this week? I think I just ached to know everyone in my inner circle was OK. There seems to be a lot of personal dramas and deaths swirling around as well, completely unrelated to the hurricanes. This leaves a traveling empath such as myself exhausted beyond measure.
Still I woke up feeling a lot more energetic today which is great because I had a few things planned… basically helping someone I knew without a car do a few errands – I am always the one to call for an emergency tampon run. And when I had finished I had decided it was time to go see what I could find with the limited daylight I had left.
I ended up in Townsend Massachusetts, I think where an old town common used to be. There was a large turn off here and I wasn’t sure if this meant anything but on a hunch I decided to check it out. There was indeed an old abandoned road turned into a trail here. It looked like at one point someone was intent on making this a very nice place to be – not too far up it there was a little clearing filled with picnic tables and a camping grill, all overlooking a river. It was quiet as could be. This was the sort of serene and calm place I needed to ease my frazzled mind. It was easy to sit here in the forest and just forget about everything and let the gentle breeze take away all negative thoughts. Overhead a hawk flew by too fast for me on catch on camera but with his elegant wings shimmering through the last rays the sun had to offer today. For a second I was humbled. Normally I hate hawks (have lost many a chicken to those little SOB’s) but today it almost felt like he was a spirit animal there to tell me something. It was very odd and inspiring all at the same time.
I continued to walk after taking a brief respite at the river to snap photos. The road path continued onward but didn’t go very far. I got to see a few different views of the river but other than that there wasn’t much here and at the end there was a little turn around loop as it just stopped dead in the woods. I wondered what this road had been put here for and why it had been abandoned and turned into a park of sorts. I have been finding so many of these places lately… and they always deepen the mystery.
In the coming weeks the trees will continue to turn color here in New England and I hope to take abundant fall foliage photos as I travel from place to place. September is always a month of great whimsy and beauty. It’s always been my favorite time of year and not just because I was born in September. Perhaps having entered the world when it was awash with such vibrant foliage is the reason my favorite color has always been orange…
